No Grater Danger

by Victoria Hamilton

  They’d need plans drawn up to show the zoning officials what square footage they were talking about, what kind of things they’d sell, how much parking space they’d require, what they proposed for sewage, trash and water, and so on. And they’d have to make a million decisions before then. A few family meetings were in their future. There was already a request in to the township by the current landowners to sever a four-acre parcel with frontage on the next road over, where the current owners had their home; sale of the land was provisional until that was finalized.

  Once she finished what she came for, out of curiosity she did a little research on the dockside shops in Queensville. They were zoned commercial, which was no surprise, but when the clerk who had helped her wandered past the table and glanced down at the map that Jaymie was examining, she said, “Oh, are you looking up the dock property in Queensville? Fergus Baird was being such a pain in the neck about all that.”

  “I know. He’s desperate to buy the shops so he can convert them into tea shops and the like.”

  The woman stopped and stared, her pale eyes wide with surprise. “Tea shops? If that’s the case he sure is asking a whole lot of questions about the township’s view on converting the whole property—which is larger than it looks from the map, by the way, several acres in all—to residential zoning for riverfront condo units with marina access and boat slips.”

  “Is that so?” Jaymie said. Well, how about that. A few things Baird was doing made sense now. Tea shops! Jaymie harrumphed in indignation. She’d have to make sure she let everyone—including Haskell Lockland—know what Fergus Baird was really up to.

  • • •

  JAYMIE STOPPED BY HER SISTER’S ANTIQUE STORE in Queensville, but Georgina told her that Becca had gone home to work on a secret project. That did not sound promising. Becca’s secret projects usually involved a lot of “purging”—in other words, getting rid of all the vintage clutter Jaymie loved so much. They had compromised lately, but that didn’t mean Jaymie was confident Becca wouldn’t throw away some of her treasures if left alone. She parked in the back lane beside her sister’s luxury sedan and strode up the flagstone walk to the back door. Without thinking she glanced under the holly hedge, expecting to see Denver there, before remembering that he now lived in luxury at his combination cat condo/catio with his maidservant, Valetta.

  She entered the kitchen. “Becca? You here?” she called, glancing around at the kitchen. Okay, no damage . . . er . . . cleaning there yet. “Be-cca!”

  “Up here!”

  Jaymie ran up the stairs and found her sister in the room she had used since childhood and now shared with Kevin. She was sitting on the floor in front of the closet.

  “Wow,” Jaymie said, looking at the boxes all around her, tissue paper everywhere like drifts of snow. “So this is where you keep your clutter.”

  Becca looked up at Jaymie with a rueful expression, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Now you know my dirty little secrets. I need to clear some space in this closet for Kevin. Poor guy lives out of a suitcase when we’re in Queensville, and that is not right, so some of my past needs to go to make way for my future.”

  “Good way to put it! I had to do the same thing in my room for Jakob. Now he stores his elegant collection of plaid work shirts in my closet. Lord, wouldn’t Dad have had a heart attack if he knew we’d both be sharing our rooms with boys?” She chuckled, and so did Becca.

  “Funny girl. You going to hang around and make jokes while I work?”

  “How about I help?”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon going through stacks and stacks of boxes, a lifetime of collecting. There were family mementos, photos, vintage stuff from Becca’s childhood, and much more. She sorted it all into piles: keep, toss, donate, recycle.

  “This is hard,” Becca said, moving her legs and rubbing her thigh. “And I don’t mean physically, though I’m stiff from sitting on the floor. But I keep putting stuff in the donate pile, then putting it back in the keep pile.”

  “I know. Hey, what’s this?” Jaymie, sitting cross-legged beside her, held up a kids’ book, the Little Golden Book version of The Poky Little Puppy that she had plucked from a box of old school yearbooks and teen magazines from the eighties.

  Becca took it from her and smiled down at it mistily, her eyes shadowed in the dim light. She set her glasses aside, since she was nearsighted and didn’t need them for reading. “It’s your favorite book, the one I read to you when you were a baby. I kept it in case I ever had kids.”

  There was a stillness in the air between them, a moment of clarity. “I kind of thought you never wanted kids because you had to look after me so much as a baby and didn’t want to be saddled with an infant ever again,” Jaymie said softly.

  “Oh, honey!” Becca said. She pulled Jaymie into an awkward hug, then released her, rocking back onto her butt. “If anything, taking care of you as a baby made me want kids even more. It was never in the cards for me. I wish it had been, but I’m content as things are, and I’m happy you’ve got a daughter I can spoil.”

  “I’m so relieved, Becca, you don’t even know.”

  They continued sorting, as Jaymie told her sister everything that had gone on in the last few days with Miss Perry, how she had seen Morgan Perry Wallace kissing Fergus Baird, and what she had learned at the township zoning office. They finally descended to the kitchen, washed their hands, and Jaymie brewed a pot of tea. They sat opposite each other at the trestle table, mugs in hand, the door to the summer porch open.

  “Why would Baird be looking into residential condo zoning for the dockside area?” Jaymie said. “He said he wanted to build new shops . . . a tea shop, a gift shop, that kind of thing.”

  “Not nearly as lucrative as condos would be, and a lot more trouble.”

  “True. But Miss Perry is never going to sell it to him, not even for the proposed shops.”

  Becca smiled over her mug. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, and took a long sip, watching her sister and waiting.

  Jaymie gave her a guilty glance. Was she that obvious? “I’m thinking that Baird may have found a way around it. If he discovered that Morgan inherits everything from her aunt, and if she divorced Saunders and married Fergus, he’d be able to do what he wants. Eventually.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs.”

  “But he’s started the chain already,” Jaymie argued. “That was no light kiss; it was passionate. And persuasive.” She waited a beat, holding her sister’s gaze. “And Miss Perry is in the hospital with a life-threatening injury.”

  “Whoa, now you’ve leapt to a murder attempt. Who do you suspect, Morgan or Baird?”

  Jaymie shook her head, faintly ashamed and yet defiant. “Neither. Both. Someone did it, Becca! Someone put that wire across the stairs and tripped poor Miss Perry. It came close to killing her. It still could.”

  “Don’t put all your suspects in one basket,” Becca advised. “Better still . . . stay out of it and let the police do their job.”

  Jaymie nodded. “I keep telling myself that. It’s none of my business.” She sighed. “If only I’d listen to me.”

  She returned upstairs, chose a few books out of her bedroom bookcase to take to the cabin to read, and headed out to pick up Jocie at school. She was a little early so she went in, updated Sybil on what was happening with the plans for a learning through objects course involving the heritage house, and then met her daughter as class let out.

  Jocie lingered for a few minutes, the tiniest member of her friend group. Because of her natural self-confidence, fostered by her father, who had done a miraculous job of raising his daughter alone, she had a circle of close friends. But all of them now towered over her. Still, she looked self-assured. Last school year she had been bullied by a boy who supposedly liked her too much to leave her alone; she had taken care of it herself by telling him to back off, and when he didn’t, by shoving him. Adults had stepped in, and the problem had been solved.

 
She never condoned violence, but Jaymie respected Jocie’s willingness to take care of herself and was loath to criticize her for it. She’d need that spunk in a world that would look down and patronize her for her size. It was a tough balance, not wanting to see her being bullied, and yet anxious that she feel competent to stand up for herself. Fortunately, so far this school year, despite her getting a late start, there had been no such problems.

  In the backseat, belted into her specialized booster seat, Jocie twisted and looked at the pile of books Jaymie had picked up at home. Jaymie glanced at her in the rearview mirror, watching her pretty face with love. Though she had approached stepmotherhood with trepidation, Jakob, who didn’t let anything worry him too much, was sure she would be fine, and he was right. She was adapting to the role and loving it far more than she had anticipated. It wasn’t always easy, but it was almost always rewarding.

  She held her breath for a moment before taking off out of the parking lot, watching Jocie pick through the novels. Some of the scenes in the historical romances were somewhat steamy and she didn’t especially want Jocie picking one up and opening to the wrong page. But as she suspected, once her daughter saw the long pages of nothing but prose, she set them aside and picked up The Poky Little Puppy. It was too young for her—Jocie was reading at a ten-year-old level or higher—but she laughed at the pictures of the wiggly puppy sneaking under the backyard fence.

  “I’m going to read this to Hoppy,” she said, waving the book around.

  “He’ll love that,” Jaymie said. Hoppy loved Jocie with an earnest adoration that had previously been reserved for Jaymie alone. And Jocie’s kitten, Lilibet, was now his best friend after a few awkward incidents of feline-canine misunderstanding. Hoppy had only ever encountered Denver’s grumpy, spiteful hisses and hadn’t quite known what to do with the kitten’s clambering, insistent devotion. But the two were now inseparable, which Jaymie loved; it meant that her little dog wasn’t lonely anymore when everyone was out of the house for a few hours.

  “What does it mean?” Jocie asked, having read the whole book within a few minutes of silence.

  “What does what mean?” Jaymie asked, turning onto a country road after checking for oncoming traffic.

  “The story, The Poky Little Puppy . . . He’s naughty all the time and steals desserts. What does it mean?”

  “Like a moral, or a point?”

  “I guess,” Jocie said, frowning at the book and leafing through it again.

  So, Jocie was beginning to understand story structure and expect certain things from a book; goodie, another reader in the making! Though to be fair, she was already an avid reader. “You know, I don’t think The Poky Little Puppy has any point at all.”

  “But he gets so many desserts and the other puppies only get one. That’s not fair. They obeyed the rules, finally, and only got one dessert each.”

  “Well, that’s true. Why don’t you rewrite it sometime so it makes more sense? But if you do, you have to make it your own story. If you use another person’s words, or storyline, or thoughts, you’re stealing.” It was never too early to introduce the notion of plagiarism, and how to avoid it. Jaymie glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “It’s the same with your schoolwork. If you have to write an essay, you should never use someone else’s words unless you’re quoting them directly.”

  Jocie frowned, her blonde brows drawn down over her round brown eyes. “I could write a whole new story about a puppy, though?”

  “You certainly could. As long as it’s your story and your ideas, you’ll be just fine.”

  “I’ll call it Slowpoke the Puppy Shares Dessert.”

  “That would be good!” Jaymie said as she pulled up to the cabin.

  Inside, Jocie sat at the table and started writing her story while Jaymie rummaged in the freezer, figuring out what to make for dinner. Jakob came home a little early and wrapped her in his arms for a long, lingering kiss, as Jocie blushed and rolled her eyes. He then volunteered to take Hoppy and Jocie for a walk; he had shared his concern for their daughter’s activity level with Jaymie, something backed up by their summertime chat with the geneticist. As a little person, it was vitally important to both watch her weight and keep up with physical activity, strength training and flexibility. Her dance classes were wonderful for that, but walking Hoppy was a great excuse for daddy-daughter talk time.

  Jaymie watched out the kitchen window as the two headed off across the driveway in the dwindling light to walk the trees. She finished putting together a dinner casserole using leftover chili and macaroni—chili mac was always a hit—pulled out salad greens and contentedly washed and chopped vegetables as she pondered her day, reflecting on how her life had changed for the better since meeting Jakob and Jocie.

  And that made her think of people who weren’t so fortunate, and that brought her to . . . Heidi! Guilt-stricken, she hurried through making the salad, tucked it back in the fridge, and sat down in the living room with the phone, calling her friend.

  “Jaymsie!” she cried, a glad tone in her voice. Heidi was the only one who called her that pet name. “How are you?”

  “I’m great. How are you? Did you get my message the other day?”

  They chatted for a while, catching up, but Jaymie couldn’t get past the feeling that there was something that her friend wasn’t saying. She tucked her feet up under her on the sofa and pulled a blanket over her lap, tugging at a loose thread. “Heidi, please tell me what’s wrong. I feel like there’s something going on.”

  “Oh, it’s okay. Nothing . . . nothing to worry about.”

  That pause spoke volumes, and now Jaymie really started to worry. On an impulse she said, “Can you and Joel come over for dinner? It’s just a casserole and salad, but Jakob and I would love to have you. Jocie talks about you all the time. Please come.” There was silence. Had the last-minute invitation seemed too last-minute? “Heidi?”

  “Joel and I . . .” She paused. There was just the sigh of her breathing for a moment, and the sense of a sob held back. “Jaymsie, I kicked him out. Joel and I are done.”

  Eight

  LUNCH FOR JOCIE MADE and tucked into her book bag, kisses at the door, and Jakob was gone, taking their daughter to school—she had missed the school bus again—before he headed to work for the day, planning to move things around at The Junk Stops Here to make way for another shipment. He had hired a young couple in their twenties to help him at the store, he’d said. New to the area and ex-military, both of them wounded in the line of duty and honorably discharged, they were perfect for many reasons. Their widely varied skills included the wife’s ability to handle any vehicle, including the Arctic Cat ATV Jakob and Gus used to move large items around their warehouse-sized store. Raised on a farm and driving by the age of ten, she had apparently crowed with delight at the sight of the Arctic Cat. He had followed up their references and done a criminal background check and was both happy and relieved to have the help.

  Jaymie took Hoppy for a walk behind the house, heading off toward the land they were considering buying. It was an uncertain kind of day, with a dark gray ceiling of cloud cover and wind that whipped along the country road, picking up dust and sending it swirling into dust devils. She stood at the top of the hill, among the corn stubble, listening to squawking blue jays and noisy crows squabbling, and thinking about her conversation with Heidi the night before. She had kicked Joel out. He was cheating on her, just as he had cheated on Jaymie. When asked if she was sure, Heidi had said yes. She had received a call from a woman in Ohio who wanted to know who the Heidi Lockland in Joel’s cell phone contacts list was. Apparently the woman thought he was moving in with her; he already had a drawer to himself and part of her closet. It was an illuminating discussion, and when Joel got home, Heidi told him to pack his things and leave.

  Heidi had cried during the call, but became calmer and agreed to have lunch with Jaymie. Unfortunately the news wasn’t that surprising. Joel had cheated on Jaymie with Heidi—though Heid
i, new in town and with no friends locally, hadn’t known he lived with a girlfriend at the time—so the pattern was entrenched. All the time he was living with Jaymie and then Heidi he had, in fact, still been married to another woman. He was a serial cheating rat fink who didn’t deserve Heidi or any decent woman. And so Jaymie had vehemently told her friend.

  “C’mon, Hoppy . . . home, baby.”

  The little Yorkie-Poo was so weary from the walk that he only had energy for a few quick dashes around the house with Lilibet, some snackies, and then the two curled up together in his bed in the corner near the fireplace. Jaymie dressed carefully and even put on some makeup and the earrings Heidi had given her for her birthday, a pair of silver feathers with blue crystals to match her eyes, her friend had said. She gazed at herself in the mirror: blue eyes, mouse brown hair that was at least shiny and abundant, round face, round body, contented expression. Now, with Jakob, she finally knew she was enough. Joel had never made her feel that. With him she had been fretful and worried and felt inadequate, especially after he started living with the dazzlingly beautiful Heidi. Daniel, her next boyfriend, had loved her the way she was, but they were a mismatch from the start, with different likes and dislikes, goals and expectations. Jakob and she matched so well, it was like they were created for each other. She wished Heidi could find that.

  She headed out the front door and paused, glancing up at the sky. Umbrella or no umbrella? It was tough to say in the spring and fall, and the gray overhead worried her. But she decided she was safe enough and headed out to the SUV. Though she and Heidi were to meet at the café in Wolverhampton for lunch, Jaymie had two hours of work with Georgina at the antique store first. Georgina was in an uncertain mood when she arrived, so Jaymie let her be, put her mind to the task and worked steadily on learning about different eras in glassware, and how to spot real Depression, carnival, and art glass. As she finished for the day and closed her notebook, she idly asked Georgina where the set of Buccellati silver came from, the set she was so positive wasn’t Miss Perry’s. With a sniffy manner the woman said she knew the provenance; it was sold to them by a local woman who inherited it from a great-aunt. Who was the woman? Jaymie asked, despite Georgina getting more and more irritated.